


I Just Wanna Be There Where You Are

by Achrya



Series: SamBuckSteveThangs [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst with a Happy Ending, Colors, Feels, M/M, Multi, Platonic Soulmates, Romantic Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-03
Updated: 2015-09-03
Packaged: 2018-04-18 21:09:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 1,605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4720520
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Achrya/pseuds/Achrya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve and Bucky were always told that there’s one person for you out there and when you find them the world suddenly gains color. Steve's world changes when he meets Peggy. Bucky falls without ever seeing anything but bits of gray. Sam, however, always had it, always had Riley, and he never regretted it even when the color bled right out of his world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Steve

**Author's Note:**

> Don’t own  
> Unbeta’d  
> Pairings: SamBuckySteve is what I had in mind when I wrote it. Steve/Peggy mentioned and ...something with Sam/Riley. Platonic? One sided? You decide!  
> Each little ficlet/drabble will get it's own chapter cause...idk, why not. Les' go!

Adults always said that when you found your soulmate you’d see the world in color, a new beautiful world that those who saw only in grays couldn’t imagine.  
Steve had decided by the time he was 15 that it just didn’t sound right to him and had to be some of that silly overly sappy stuff that people tried to peddle to get kids to listen and fall in line. It just didn’t hold up because he’d already met Bucky but the world was still gray to both of them.  
If Bucky wasn’t it then who else could be? Bucky was his best friend, his brother, his rock, the other half of him, the only thing that kept his head above water some days. He loved Bucky so much it made his heart hurt.  
He knew he wasn’t supposed to because they were both men and, of course, not soulmates but that didn’t have to mean anything. Bucky’s parents weren’t soulmates, they both saw the word in shades of gray, but they’d loved each other right until they’d been in the ground.  
They didn’t need color because they had each other. They would always have each other, until the end of the line.  
But then he met Peggy with her dark brown hair and deep red lips.


	2. Bucky

When Steve, bigger and stronger than he’d left him, tells him that he can see color Bucky’s heart breaks a little. Not because someone else came in and gave Steve something he hadn’t been able to, though there is that and it chafes because he’d always been the one to do for Steve, but because he can hear the guilt. Steve is looking down at his hands, pale as a sheet, shoulders hunched like he wants to be smaller, which is funny considering.  
So he nudges Steve and smiles. “That Peggy. She’s a good dame.”  
Steve smiles back, a shaking fragile thing.  
Bucky had never had any use for color in his life because he’d always had Steve and couldn’t imagine a world where he wanted anything else.  
When the world slows down and he’s falling he’s glad for just a second that it wasn’t him. He didn’t bring Steve color but that means he won’t be the one to take it away either and that’s what matters.  
He never needed it himself anyway.


	3. Chapter 3

Sam’s world was always in color; bright, vivid, and absolutely perfectly in color.  
Well, maybe not always, but as far back as he could remember. There had always been Riley and so there had always been color.  
His parents had always hoped it was someone else, that he’d bumped into some girl the same day he’d met Riley and that he’d just been too young to realize or verbalize until then. Not because it would have mattered, they loved him no matter what, but because they worried. The world was rough enough without throwing being a gay black man into the mix.  
In the end Riley wasn’t interested in him like that. They kissed once or twice but Riley had never felt it and Sam was fine with that. Once upon a time all same gender soulmates were considered ‘platonic’ but the world had changed and come to accept that maybe that wasn’t the case but maybe, in their case, that was exactly what it was.  
Besides, Riley was goofy looking and Sam Wilson was a man of discerning tastes, or so he told his sisters at Riley’s engagement party.  
He never regretted that there wasn’t more to them because they’d been best friends, from the cradle to the end and that was worth everything. He did regret that his soulmate was such a dumbass.  
That’s what he told people anyway, always smiling to keep from sobbing because he never cried, not once, because if he started he knew he'd never stop. He hadn't allowed it even in that first moment, when the shock had hit him and the color had bled from the world.


	4. Steve

When Steve wakes up, and sorts everything out and tells Nick Fury that his little show was stupid, he realizes the world is duller. The colors were muddy and faded, slowly leaking away. He knows what it means, would have known even if he hadn’t gone to see Peggy himself.  
He sits and holds her hand and talks to her when she’s lucid and talks to her when she isn’t and somehow it helps. As strange as it was he was ready to go back to a world without color, to just go back to how things had been before. It reminded him that he didn’t belong there, that he’d lost everything that had mattered in the war.  
It was just easier.


	5. Sam

Sam adjusts and copes, assuming that adjusting and coping involves leaving the military and running away from New York to work in DC. It wasn’t that people were overly sympathetic or clingy because most people were concerned with Riley’s fiancee, as they should have been. The problem was looking around at all the places he’d been to with Riley, looking at the lives they’d lead, and seeing it so differently.   
It was like salt in the wound and Sam couldn’t fucking deal with salt.  
He hated salt.   
...it wasn’t the best metaphor.   
DC was good. The VA was good. He made friends, went to support groups, went to therapy, and came to terms and that was all good. He dated, unsuccessfully because he always found himself thinking ‘What would Riley think of this guy?’ and they were never up to snuff and somehow that was good too.  
“On your left.”   
He turns his head and realizes the dumbass about to lap him has very blue eyes.   
When he comes back around 3 or was it 4 more times Sam can practically hear Riley laughing.   
Which was good because he himself was quietly falling apart.


	6. Steve

Steve looks at the man who made his colors brighter and wonders how the hell it’s possible. Sam doesn’t look like he’s in much better shape, but it was possible that was because he was sitting on the ground wheezing quietly.  
Steve might have been showing off a little bit. He doesn’t know why he’d been doing it, it’s not how he usually is, he’d never done that for anyone else except Bucky but there it was.  
“In my day everyone said you only got one soul mate.”  
Sam’s eyes cut over to him. “In your day...man. With polio? Okay, let's go ahead and use that as our reference point.”  
Sam’s laugh is warm and his eyes are a deep brown and it’s  
just  
Steve looks away.  
“I guess no one wants to talk about there being more than one The One” Sam said finally and he looked back in time to see Sam tip his head back to look up at nothing at all. “Or maybe everyone has a platonic and a romantic soulmate. Maybe people just don’t notice after the first one?”  
Steve quirks an eyebrow. “You think we’re platonic then?”  
He gets another side eye. “Already done that dance, actually.”  
“Oh.”


	7. Bucky

The Soldier punches through the windshield of the car, hears someone shout in alarm, and thinks, dimly, that the sky looks different and then he puts it aside because when he tries to think about that there's only static.


	8. Chapter 8

Steve isn’t sure what to think of it at all because he loves Bucky just like he always has, even though this Bucky is different and won’t ever be the same, needs him to be strong like his friend never needed him before, but Sam is the one who made his world light up again.

He runs it by Natasha and she just snorts before putting on her ‘I’m mocking you’ voice. “Oh no, I’ve got a hot soulmate and a hot guy who is completely devoted to me, my life is just so hard, what do I do? Whatever Rogers.”

Sam tells Steve he's overthinking it and to just let it play out. That they'll work it out, the three of them. Then, under his breath, mutters that he probably needs help keeping up Steve's crazy ass stamina anyway because he's getting old and creaky and Steve is just inconsiderate of mere mortals. 

Bucky doesn’t care much about it one way or the other. He comes back to Steve because that’s what he’s meant to do, that’s what’s under the static and the ice. Steve, always Steve. He does mention one day to Steve that he thinks he remembers colors, just for a little bit, but that Hydra did something to him to take it away. He'd come back babbling about knowing Steve and everything being different, bright, he didn't understand, what did it mean, and they'd pressed him back into the chair, chattering nervously about fixing him. Steve's face goes hard and his eyes are sad. Bucky hates that face so then he shakes his head and says that maybe it wasn't true at all. 

He doesn't need to see things like they do. He has Steve and Steve had Sam and he likes Sam, or at least he thinks he likes Sam. He’s not completely sure what that entails or means and if he pokes too hard the static comes back.

But he makes him food and doesn’t get mad when he hogs Steve and smiles at him and helps him with his hair and lets him sleep in the bed with him and Steve and that’s...something that means something.

Means more than colors that he may have never had or may have been taken. 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AND DONE
> 
> Maybe I should have said hopeful ending instead of happy? ...yeah, probably.


End file.
